K.B. Spangler

My book club’s choice ;)

Only a few pages in, I thought: “Right, this is going to be a NICE book, YA sci-fi novel that knows exactly what it’s doing. Yay!”

The book drops you in the middle of the action right away, so the worldbuilding feels quick and effortless. For a reader, it’s like putting on a pair of well-worn slippers. I still have quite a few questions, but I hope they will be answered in the next book – because I’ll definitely read it.

Tembi, the main character, is cool, inquisitive, eager, badass, has anger management issues and keeps her head (mostly) cool in a crisis. I adored her. Coming of age stories and plots where someone with special abilities goes to a very special school have been told countless times before. Telling such a story yet again, without making the reader yawn and cringe, is impressive.

I really enjoyed the idea of Deep, the alien intelligence, and its efforts to communicate and build relationships with Tembi and other Witches.

The second half of the book gets darker and darker – there is war and genocide, complicity through inaction, difficult choices.

And wait, supply chains? A sci-fi book that takes supply chains seriously? Give me more, please.
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The YA prequel, Stoneskin, has grown up, painfully. It has become “Blackwing War” – a grimmer, very angry tale. There is anguish and tragedy, and characters that make horrible choices for the right (or so they seem to them) reasons. The horrors of genocide and concentration camps are described in such a way that I could almost hear the author screaming in the background “why can’t they see?”

Tembi is more mature. I really liked how she becomes stronger, smarter, angrier, more independent, and makes her own difficult choices.

The Deep is also developing in interesting ways, and things that were hinted at in the prequel are beginning to come together in the end. Exciting…

I find that I have trouble letting this book go. I will now wait, somewhat impatiently, for the next one.
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While I never lost interest in the plot, there were points where I wondered about where this book would end, and if I would care when we got there.

Yes.
The ending is worth the journey.
I'm glad I read this. I will give the next in the series a try.

The only thing wrong with this far-future fantasy in space is the use of real-world current phrases, and the occasional reference to things like the characters of Toy Story, sprinkled throughout. And Tembi says a curse word in German for some reason. It was distracting.… (more)

3.5 better and better stars. This needed another polish edit, but that's just a quibble. The rising tension worked very well because the MC and crew became more and more important to me. There seemed to be some internal conflict about the implants, but I could've missed a point. That's less important to me than the characters themselves. Three stars are for the author delivering on the promise to entertain me. The half star rounded up on sites too dim to allow half-stars is because this is the kind of superhero story I want, but am too impatient to write myself. On to book 2.… (more)